Conservatives Big on Fear, Brain Study Finds

[Father Heathen]

We all see and believe what ever suits us.

Your post history affirms that notion.

 

[WyattDerp]

Your post history affirms that notion.

That's odd.. when I look at it, I see a Sarah Silverman's presidency in 2016

 

[Father Heathen]

That's odd.. when I look at it, I see a Sarah Silverman's presidency in 2016

With Carrot Top as her running mate?

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

I'm pro gay rights, pro women's rights, pro choice, pro equality, pro legalization of marijuana and prostitution, pro free speech, pro science, pro secularization, pro sexual liberation, etc.

Most would categorize that as being rather liberal.

Apart from The legalization of pot, even conservatives in europe would say these are already reality and not in question. But no one would say these freedoms should be totally unrestrained or not balanced by counter rights... Rights and freedoms are never absolute.

 

[Alceste]

And for future reference, I visit this site mainly after a long day of research and typically alcohol consumption. So the this should be taken into account when it comes to the tone of my responses.


The simple answer is:
1) This entire thread is about a bogus research study, and anything related to topics to it should be located in other threads
2) Canada is not as you depict it.

Canada is not as I depict it? Lol. I've lived in four provinces and traveled extensively through the rest. I've also been to the US, so I'm in a reasonably good position to compare our cultures. Have you ever even been here? We are pretty relaxed and pretty liberal, as our gay marriage, free healthcare, strict control of domestic sales of weapons designed to kill humans, and lack of religious curricula in public schools, etc. demonstrates. If you have a brief counter to that point, I'd like to hear it.

 

[Alceste]

Apart from The legalization of pot, even conservatives in europe would say these are already reality and not in question. But no one would say these freedoms should be totally unrestrained or not balanced by counter rights... Rights and freedoms are never absolute.

True, also in Canada those items are non-controversial. Even pot is non-controversial. Most Canadians want it legalized, and it's inevitable that it will be eventually, as older voters start to die off. The province I live in is itching for the tax revenue legalized pot would generate. The government hustles booze here, so already has a "19 and up" distribution network established.

 

[Sunstone]

The Republican Brain, by Chris Mooney.

 

[gnomon]

We all see and believe what ever suits us.

That's fine.

But no word yet on the quality posts put forth by Legion in this thread.

It still appears to me many are positing what they want the study to confirm rather than applying much critical thought to it.

This side debate on the thread appears to be completely incoherent.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Canada is not as I depict it? Lol. I've lived in four provinces and traveled extensively through the rest. I've also been to the US, so I'm in a reasonably good position to compare our cultures.

I know you wanted a brief reply, so I have noted sections that are less important and might be skimmed or ignored as I am incapable (it seems) of brevity. Also, the last section is the "main" brief reply.

First, I have to apologize. It was late, I'd had a fair amount alcohol which tends to improve my mood, but also tends to make me more upset and more "expressive" when I come across things I find irritating. So I was unnecessarily rude, unkind, and unfair.

The following can be skimmed or skipped. It is a review of my background per your question about my knowledge of Canada but also addresses my knowledge of US diversity and my knowledge of other countries outside North America

I spent most of my life (I moved there when I was almost two, and moved out a few months ago) in one state: Massachusetts, arguably the most liberal state in all of the US. I lived in various different places there, and I moved back now to near where I was born: just outside Washington DC, another very liberal area. My father's side of the family is mainly clustered in the DC/Maryland region of the East, while my mother's family lives almost entirely in Colorado. In other words, they live in a conservative (by US standards) state. The few times we've had more extensive family gatherings (e.g., weddings, in which my mother's cousins and my 2nd cousins and so on are present) on my mother's side, I've not only visisted numerous red states (South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Nebraska, etc.), but have gathered in such places with family members scattered across the red states.

On the other hand, although his parents are both US-born, my father was born in Austria. He and his siblings grew up in places like Austria, Iceland, Greece, etc., because my grandfather (as US born ethnically German Jew) was for sometime working for the C.I.A. (not as a Jason Bourne type; my grandfather was linguist, and after leaving the C.I.A. became a professor of classics and linguistics at Cornell)

My cousin (father's side) lives in Estonia. His sister (my cousin) lives in England where she moved after teaching English in Japan. In fact, most of those in my immediate or extended (on my father's side) family have lived for long periods of time in Europe, Asia, South America, etc. When I worked at Harvard, other lab members included more native Italians than those from other nations (including the US), but I worked perhaps most closely with a native from Canada.


Returning to the US, apart from travelling/visiting I have spent all my time in two of the most liberal places in the US, but mostly in Massachusetts. And studying and working in boston universities has increased the amount of time I've spent with those on the far left (across the US, university faculties are mostly liberal and often liberal by any standard; most of those I knew as an undergrad and grad student disliked Obama because he wasn't socialist enough).


End of My Background Section

Yet the very liberal population, particularly in the Cambridge area and in the academic setting, was filled with many of the most close-minded, bigotted, intolerant people I have ever met. Many don't trust religious people regardless of the religion (one conversation on how ignorant religious people are was started by the Canadian I worked with). My father's brother (who lives near DC) has expressed his views that people in the red states shouldn't be allowed to vote, something I heard a lot in Massachusetts.

Also, take Tina Fey's and Amy Poehler's description (skip to 2:50 minutes in, it's only a few seconds long) [youtube]-6BW3QWfJpc[/youtube]

Where do I find the people who are friendly to strangers, more open-minded in general, often liberal (by US standards), compassionate, calm, etc.? In places like Colorado, Utah, North Carolina, etc.

However, having spent almost all of my life around people who are liberal by any standard, I can say they are definetely open-minded...unless you don't agree with them, in which case being calm and compassionate goes out the window.

We are pretty relaxed and pretty liberal, as our gay marriage, free healthcare, strict control of domestic sales of weapons designed to kill humans, and lack of religious curricula in public schools, etc. demonstrates.

You think that something like "free healthcare" demonstrates "pretty relaxed"? Again, almost everyone I know is for free health care, gay marriage, strict gun control or a full ban, etc. However, of the people I know of have known well, all but one have been as likely to blow-up and be insulting, hateful, etc., as the very liberal.

Excursus on "pro-Gun" individuals in the US which can be

The various times I spent in North Carolina was for tactical training, including with assault weapons (and in some cases I mean assault weapons by "US" standards, i.e., fully automatic weapons). There (and elsewhere) I trained with Navy Seals, Special Forces, ex-Israeli special forces, ex-Marines, paramilitary contractors, and civilians. In North Carolina especially, almost all were from conservative states. Only one person I met the stereotypical, biggoted, gun-totin' conservative type. The rest were far calmer, cooler, nicer, and more open-minded than most of the liberals I know.

End of Section


The following section compares your description of Canada with the US. It is long, so in case you don't read it the cliff-notes version is that our laws and views are either like yours or even more liberal (or, in the case of gun control, even more strict).

Massachusetts has one of the lowest rates of firearm crime in the US, and the strictest gun control policy. It is one of the only places in the country where you need a permit (and a course before you can apply and pay for it) to own shotguns or rifles which do not have a detachable clip (i.e., those which are not "assault" rifles). That same permit is required to carry pepper spray, and if you use pepper spray in self-defense without a permity, you will be arrested and charged. Double-edged knives, switchblades, and a host of other weapons are banned (you can't own them). What you can carry depends on local town/city ordinance. In Boston, for example, you cannot carry a knife over 2.5 inches.

Most gun crimes (75%) are violations relating to permits, and although this can mean illegal possession of a gun, for one thing that often means the person forgot to renew their license, or moved here from another state and didn't realize that here you need a permit to have any kind of gun (including single-shot, bird-hunting shotgun), and for another thing it also covers forgetting a legally owned, unloaded, and properlly stored firearm was secured in your trunk when you don't have a license to carry and you weren't heading to a gun range or to your security job (for all but one license type, you cannot ever carry a gun on your person and you can only travel with it in very specfic situations). That's why about half of "gun crimes" are dismissed; they were mistakes or weren't worth prosecuting.

Gay marriage marriage is legal here. We are the only state that didn't vote for Nixon. Health insurance is a requirement and for those who cannot afford it is provided. Massachusetts is overwhelmingly pro-choice, pro-sociolized government, and in all other ways politically liberal by "non-US" standards"

End section comparing Massachusetts Liberalism and Canadian


Brief Reply Part

However, Massachusetts has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the entire US. So despite being the most liberal state with the strictest weapons laws (where stun guns are banned, a permit is needed to carry pepper-spray), despite having the closest thing to a socialized health care system possible for a state, despite wide-spread atheism, agnosticism, even anti-religious views, and despite all the other ways in which Massachusetts is so liberal by non-US standards, most of the very liberal (by US standards) I know or have known (and there are lot, see above) are some of most intolerant and most likely to blow-up at those who disagree with them. Also, despite a general dislike of guns and more laws controlling weapons than Canada, the level of violent crime in Massachusetts is higher than most places in the US and doesn't typically involve guns but things like knives.

So if you have an explanation for the lack of a correlation between wide-spread liberal views and liberal policies in Massachusetts which are very like Canada, the UK, etc., and a decrease (rather than an increase) in violent crime relative to most conservative areas, I'd like to hear it. And because of the many ways in which the size of the US population and population diversity affects things like crime, a better comparison with your compassionate, calm, open-minded description of Canada would be certain regions in the US which are conservative. And perhaps a few travels here, given my experience of the diversity in this country and how much very liberal places match up with your description, were not enough.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Study: Conservatives have larger ‘fear center’ in brain | The Raw Story
A study at University College London in the UK has found that conservatives’ brains have larger amygdalas than the brains of liberals.

You realize that you are citing a story on the same article linked to in the OP?

I have repeatedly gone over the flaws of the study, showing where they distorted what they did, manipulated data, and/or lied, as well as the problems which generalize to much better performed studies. For example:

The authors cited two studies, one after another, when the first one is devoted to demonstrating that the second is wrong.

2) The amygdala (and, additionally, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is also what the researchers looked at) is implicated in lots of things. The ACC, in fact, is implicated in Resolving Emotional Conflicts (that's a 2012 study from Neuron, one of the most respected and important journals in neuroscience, unlike Current Biology, which is where the OP's study was published).
3) Emotional regulation and "fear" and it's relationship to the various parts of the cortex and amygdala are also poorly understood, even when it comes to fear and emotional regulation in general (see e.g., full-text studies here & here).

Next, they get really fancy (it seems). They "performed diffeomorphic anatomical registration through exponentiated lie algebra". Wow.

Well, actually, although this sounds really fancy, it really comes from the acronym DARTEL, which is part of the SPM8 software package. What does the SPM8 manual say about this acronynm? "DARTEL stands for "Diffeomorphic Anatomical Registration Through Exponentiated Lie algebra". It may not use a true Lie Algebra, but the acronym is a nice one."

To the normal human, "Lie algebra" sounds likes a program you might use to cheat on a high school math test. In reality, it has to do with a set of related mathematical notions (fields, vector spaces, commutators, groups, etc.) which might be grouped under the name "abstract algebras".

What's important is that while it sounds like the researchers did something really fancy, although they don't even know it what they did was tell something which isn't true. Because the people who designed SPM8 and therefore DARTEL decided they liked the acronym even though it isn't accurate, and because the researchers decided not to use the acronym but describe what they did as if they actually did some really complicated mathematics instead of follow some instructions from a software manual, they said they did something they actually did not do. They did not perform any "diffeomorphic anatomical registration through exponentiated lie algebra", because the program they used isn't, strictly speaking, using a Lie Algebra. But it doesn't sound impressive to say "we then used SPM8's DARTEL" when you can say instead "we performed diffeomorphic anatomical registration through exponentiated lie algebra", even if this isn't true.

They lied about using Lie algebras. Irony, or really bad pun?

Amygdalas are responsible for fear and other “primitive” emotions. At the same time, conservatives’ brains were also found to have a smaller anterior cingulate — the part of the brain responsible for courage and optimism.

The amydala is responsible for emotinal regulation (among other things). Which means it is involved in fear, and controlling fear. Also, among the many defects of the study was that they only looked at gray matter, not white matter. White matter is what connects neurons, and in the cortical areas in particular (like the ACC, which the study you and the OP's link concerns) a single neuron may have connections (white matter) to over 10,000 other neurons. And as the study was looking at a connective system (how corticial regions interact with the amygdala to regulate things like fear), white matter is if anything more imortant than gray matter. Single neurons are nothing. What matters are networks, and for distributed network systems in particular, like the emotional regulation system, the networks are not the number of neurons (gray matter) as much as they are the number and nature of the connections (white matter).

The study didn't look at white matter.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

if you google the words "Conservarive fear" you come up with numerous studies both european and American. none of which counter this finding, but tend to support it quite strongly.

There are a number of issues here.

1) Because of the nature of most, if not all, of these studies, the conclusions can be turned to show the opposite. For example, in the OP's study (which you indirectly linked to again with a link to another article on it), they found that decreased gray matter in parts of the emotional regulation system correlated with conservatism. If we ignore all the problems with the study, and imagine that they found the same was true with white matter, we can conlude something quite different.

One of the studies the researchers cited in support of their link was a lesion study using monkeys, which showed that if you actually slice away at the cortical region the researchers in your (and the OP's) study looked at you end up with monkey's who act more like scientists (they will repeatedly test the same system to see the results). I could conclude that decreases in the ACC (based on the same study the researchers cited) actually correlate with increased skeptism, or a more scientific approach to situations. It would be bogus, but as their are so many studies showing contradicting things about how the emotional regualtion (cortical-amygdala) system works, I can explain any result any way I want.

2) Even in the US, university faculty are almost entirely liberal, even in conservative states and even by UK or Canadian or similar standards. Why is it that most of the studies which demonstrate how conservatives are inferior in one way or another (or many) use the most contested methods? Why is it that before technology which makes it so much easy to publish a study with bogus results (starting with statistical software and really picking up with fMRI equipment), the same researchers (social psychologists and their affiliates) weren't producing nearly as much research on this? Why is it that the same researchers tend to use more advanced mathematical methods (i.e., ones which are still easy produce thanks to software but which are harder to interpret and easier to manipulate) and more diverse mathematical methods in order to do studies like this than they do for their other studies?

Because even though most of these researchers do not have an adequate mathematical background to understand the statistical models/techniques they are able to use thanks to software, they know enough to know which techniques have something to do with what they want to find and are able to cycle through tests until they find one which churns out the desired result in no time at all. So perhaps they are more motivated by bias than scientific inquiry.

3) As most of the people who are aware and have contributed to the literature on neuroimaging methodologies, problems with neuroimaging research,, etc., are not involved in these kinds of studies nor reviewing them (except in the published research, where such studies are torn apart) we get more and more of this junk. And as the public eats up reports about brain scans, social neuroscience is not the only field where bad research is continually churned out thanks to powerful machines and programs and too little expertise which is funded because the people behind grants like seeing neat pictures of brains and hearing wild claims about how the mind "really" works or how certain people "really" think.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Geoffrey Aguirre is one of the few who has not only done a lot neuroscience research, but has also contributed to the development of methods and criticism of methods used, mostly in the technical literature but also in one article for the public: "The Political Brain". It's on this kind of study, i.e., one which makes claims about conservatives using neuroimaging. He even links to some important articles also for the non-specialists such as "Mind Games: How not to mix politics and science" (Nature).

However, for those who are more visual learners, he also was part of a Upenn neuroethics collaborative, and his talk on the problems with neuroimaging and what researchers claim vs. what they actually can claim as well as how fMRI works is available on youtube:
[youtube]iSSiN5OrRig[/youtube]

 

[Alceste]

I know you wanted a brief reply, so I have noted sections that are less important and might be skimmed or ignored as I am incapable (it seems) of brevity. Also, the last section is the "main" brief reply.

First, I have to apologize. It was late, I'd had a fair amount alcohol which tends to improve my mood, but also tends to make me more upset and more "expressive" when I come across things I find irritating. So I was unnecessarily rude, unkind, and unfair.

The following can be skimmed or skipped. It is a review of my background per your question about my knowledge of Canada but also addresses my knowledge of US diversity and my knowledge of other countries outside North America

I spent most of my life (I moved there when I was almost two, and moved out a few months ago) in one state: Massachusetts, arguably the most liberal state in all of the US. I lived in various different places there, and I moved back now to near where I was born: just outside Washington DC, another very liberal area. My father's side of the family is mainly clustered in the DC/Maryland region of the East, while my mother's family lives almost entirely in Colorado. In other words, they live in a conservative (by US standards) state. The few times we've had more extensive family gatherings (e.g., weddings, in which my mother's cousins and my 2nd cousins and so on are present) on my mother's side, I've not only visisted numerous red states (South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Nebraska, etc.), but have gathered in such places with family members scattered across the red states.

On the other hand, although his parents are both US-born, my father was born in Austria. He and his siblings grew up in places like Austria, Iceland, Greece, etc., because my grandfather (as US born ethnically German Jew) was for sometime working for the C.I.A. (not as a Jason Bourne type; my grandfather was linguist, and after leaving the C.I.A. became a professor of classics and linguistics at Cornell)

My cousin (father's side) lives in Estonia. His sister (my cousin) lives in England where she moved after teaching English in Japan. In fact, most of those in my immediate or extended (on my father's side) family have lived for long periods of time in Europe, Asia, South America, etc. When I worked at Harvard, other lab members included more native Italians than those from other nations (including the US), but I worked perhaps most closely with a native from Canada.


Returning to the US, apart from travelling/visiting I have spent all my time in two of the most liberal places in the US, but mostly in Massachusetts. And studying and working in boston universities has increased the amount of time I've spent with those on the far left (across the US, university faculties are mostly liberal and often liberal by any standard; most of those I knew as an undergrad and grad student disliked Obama because he wasn't socialist enough).


End of My Background Section

Yet the very liberal population, particularly in the Cambridge area and in the academic setting, was filled with many of the most close-minded, bigotted, intolerant people I have ever met. Many don't trust religious people regardless of the religion (one conversation on how ignorant religious people are was started by the Canadian I worked with). My father's brother (who lives near DC) has expressed his views that people in the red states shouldn't be allowed to vote, something I heard a lot in Massachusetts.

Also, take Tina Fey's and Amy Poehler's description (skip to 2:50 minutes in, it's only a few seconds long) [youtube]-6BW3QWfJpc[/youtube]

Where do I find the people who are friendly to strangers, more open-minded in general, often liberal (by US standards), compassionate, calm, etc.? In places like Colorado, Utah, North Carolina, etc.

However, having spent almost all of my life around people who are liberal by any standard, I can say they are definetely open-minded...unless you don't agree with them, in which case being calm and compassionate goes out the window.


You think that something like "free healthcare" demonstrates "pretty relaxed"? Again, almost everyone I know is for free health care, gay marriage, strict gun control or a full ban, etc. However, of the people I know of have known well, all but one have been as likely to blow-up and be insulting, hateful, etc., as the very liberal.

Excursus on "pro-Gun" individuals in the US which can be

The various times I spent in North Carolina was for tactical training, including with assault weapons (and in some cases I mean assault weapons by "US" standards, i.e., fully automatic weapons). There (and elsewhere) I trained with Navy Seals, Special Forces, ex-Israeli special forces, ex-Marines, paramilitary contractors, and civilians. In North Carolina especially, almost all were from conservative states. Only one person I met the stereotypical, biggoted, gun-totin' conservative type. The rest were far calmer, cooler, nicer, and more open-minded than most of the liberals I know.

End of Section


The following section compares your description of Canada with the US. It is long, so in case you don't read it the cliff-notes version is that our laws and views are either like yours or even more liberal (or, in the case of gun control, even more strict).

Massachusetts has one of the lowest rates of firearm crime in the US, and the strictest gun control policy. It is one of the only places in the country where you need a permit (and a course before you can apply and pay for it) to own shotguns or rifles which do not have a detachable clip (i.e., those which are not "assault" rifles). That same permit is required to carry pepper spray, and if you use pepper spray in self-defense without a permity, you will be arrested and charged. Double-edged knives, switchblades, and a host of other weapons are banned (you can't own them). What you can carry depends on local town/city ordinance. In Boston, for example, you cannot carry a knife over 2.5 inches.

Most gun crimes (75%) are violations relating to permits, and although this can mean illegal possession of a gun, for one thing that often means the person forgot to renew their license, or moved here from another state and didn't realize that here you need a permit to have any kind of gun (including single-shot, bird-hunting shotgun), and for another thing it also covers forgetting a legally owned, unloaded, and properlly stored firearm was secured in your trunk when you don't have a license to carry and you weren't heading to a gun range or to your security job (for all but one license type, you cannot ever carry a gun on your person and you can only travel with it in very specfic situations). That's why about half of "gun crimes" are dismissed; they were mistakes or weren't worth prosecuting.

Gay marriage marriage is legal here. We are the only state that didn't vote for Nixon. Health insurance is a requirement and for those who cannot afford it is provided. Massachusetts is overwhelmingly pro-choice, pro-sociolized government, and in all other ways politically liberal by "non-US" standards"

End section comparing Massachusetts Liberalism and Canadian


Brief Reply Part

However, Massachusetts has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the entire US. So despite being the most liberal state with the strictest weapons laws (where stun guns are banned, a permit is needed to carry pepper-spray), despite having the closest thing to a socialized health care system possible for a state, despite wide-spread atheism, agnosticism, even anti-religious views, and despite all the other ways in which Massachusetts is so liberal by non-US standards, most of the very liberal (by US standards) I know or have known (and there are lot, see above) are some of most intolerant and most likely to blow-up at those who disagree with them. Also, despite a general dislike of guns and more laws controlling weapons than Canada, the level of violent crime in Massachusetts is higher than most places in the US and doesn't typically involve guns but things like knives.

So if you have an explanation for the lack of a correlation between wide-spread liberal views and liberal policies in Massachusetts which are very like Canada, the UK, etc., and a decrease (rather than an increase) in violent crime relative to most conservative areas, I'd like to hear it. And because of the many ways in which the size of the US population and population diversity affects things like crime, a better comparison with your compassionate, calm, open-minded description of Canada would be certain regions in the US which are conservative. And perhaps a few travels here, given my experience of the diversity in this country and how much very liberal places match up with your description, were not enough.

Thanks for breaking your post up into manageable chunks.

I've been to Massachusetts. I did not find it at all similar to any part of Canada I've seen. If that is your most liberal state, I think you still have A long way to go before you can claim to have anything resembling Canadian political sensibilities in your country.

 

[Mercy Not Sacrifice]

We generally don't perceive the poor this way here. Yes, there are some who are habituated to welfare and lack the motivation to stand on their own, but we generally assume those folks need more help, not less. There is often mental illness or addiction involved.

Wish we could get some of that vibe back. Yes, we actually used to be *slightly* better about this.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Thanks for breaking your post up into manageable chunks.

I've been to Massachusetts. I did not find it at all similar to any part of Canada I've seen.

I didn't say it was similar. I said the views and politics were. Most people there who know something about politics want the US to adopt socialism. Massachusetts was the first state to legalize same-sex marriages. We are one of the few states to decriminalize marijuana possession (under a certain amount).

If that is your most liberal state, I think you still have A long way to go before you can claim to have anything resembling Canadian political sensibilities in your country.

Well (see below), it's true that we'd have to increase the number of people we shoot and kill every year, relax our gun laws, relax our weapons policies, and decrease ethnic diversity among other things to be more like Canada. Once again, I'm sure your travels can explain all the data, the research, etc., because you visited some places in the US and you live in Canada, and thus your subjective experience (no doubt completely devoid of personal biases) is sufficient to negate empirical research.

Last year, the Canadian Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act came into effect, which (among other things) means "Removal of the requirement to register non-restricted firearms". Non-restricted firearms are defined as " an ordinary rifle, shotgun or combination gun that is not described as being restricted or prohibited".

In Massachusetts, you have need a permit to own a rifle, a shotgun, or even pepper spray. You let 12 year olds get gun licenses (see 8.2-3 here), you let people keep automatic weapons obtained before 1978 and assualt weapons before 1992 and various other years they were grandfathered in (see here). Most people in Massachusetts would consider letting a 12 year old own a shotgun to be child abuse. You have to be 18 in Massachusetts to get a permit which lets you own hunting rifles and shotguns, and the only weapons that are "grandfathered in" are guns which are banned under consumer safety laws designed to make it impossible (or not worth the effort) for gun companies to make their guns "massachusetts compliant). This doesn't include automatic weapons.

Although "the vast majority of violent crime in Canada" doesn't involve guns (juristats 2008 report "Firearms & Violent Crimes"), in 2006 there were over 8,000 cases of "fire-arm related violent crime". It's hard to compare to Massachusetts, given population size and other difference, but not only were there fewer individuals arraigned on any charge related to guns (Office of Public Safety's "Analysis of Massachusetts Firearms Related Offenses"), from 2006 to 2008, barely any were violent and "the majority of firearms related charges for all age groups were dismissed or Nol prossed". Also, according to this 2010 study from the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, the Boston Gun Project was effective, resulting in a decline in youth violence (while Canada is on the rise there).

But that wasn't getting the job done. So I went to the ICPSR National Incident-Based Reporting System data at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) and downloaded their data files for 2006 in SPSS format (after running several online analyses, which weren't cutting it) and their codebook. And I was able to filter offenses and crime by state, looking only at Massachusetts (V2002(20)), and compared weapon types (ranging from poison and drugs to explosives and motor vehicles, but also including a range of guns including not specified and other). Crimes ranged from kidnapping to rape to various types of assault and of course homicide. Suprisingly, no weapons were used in counterfeiting. However, when it comes to guns, they were involved in about 1,000 cases of violent crime. That's about 1/8 of canada's that year (also, my data indicated higher number than the FBI- see the table of Massachusetts here). Canada has five times the population of Massachusetts. And although like Canada, we had far more uses of knives in assaults, this is not true murder or non-negligent homicide, where guns were 2x that of knives.
For Canada I only have 2008 on hand from juristat, but:
"In 2008, police reported nearly 23,500 victims of a violent crime committed with a knife, accounting for 6% of all violent incidents. Homicides and attempted murders had the highest proportion of incidents involving knives, at about one-third"

In 2008, the total number (teeth, guns, knives, bats, cars, etc.) of US violent crimes was almost 30,000. If 23,500 of violent crime in canada used knives, and accounted for only 6% if the violence, that means that the total number is almost 400,000. That's over 12 times the number in Massachusetts, but your population is only 5-6 times larger. And even in Massachusetts more people were killed by guns in 2006 (and in general) than knives, this is not so of Canada yet about 8x the number of people were killed by violent uses of firearms in that year.

So yeah, we have a ways to go before we're more like Canada. We have the to increase violence a bit, switch from using guns in homicides to knives, increase the violent use of both, decrease the amount of legislature monitoring the acquisition, sales, traffic, ownership, usage, transportation, etc., of guns and weapons in general, and decrease ethnic and cultural diversity. But at least the absolute certainty that conservatives are flawed in various ways and that the differences are likely due to things like inferior intelligence rather than fundamental philosophical differences, as well as the seemingly incapacity to recognize our own liberal intolerance or instability and other traits so "typical" of conservatives is something we folks in Massachusetts seem to share with Canada.

However, I'm sure your time in Massachusetts completely negates the fact that I spent almost my whole life in various places there, and renders any research on Canadian crime flawed.

 

[Meow Mix]

[youtube]-6BW3QWfJpc[/youtube]

Note: Erin for some reason very much likey this "Amy Poehler." :rainbow1:

 

[Alceste]

I didn't say it was similar. I said the views and politics were. Most people there who know something about politics want the US to adopt socialism. Massachusetts was the first state to legalize same-sex marriages. We are one of the few states to decriminalize marijuana possession (under a certain amount).




Well (see below), it's true that we'd have to increase the number of people we shoot and kill every year, relax our gun laws, relax our weapons policies, and decrease ethnic diversity among other things to be more like Canada. Once again, I'm sure your travels can explain all the data, the research, etc., because you visited some places in the US and you live in Canada, and thus your subjective experience (no doubt completely devoid of personal biases) is sufficient to negate empirical research.

Last year, the Canadian Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act came into effect, which (among other things) means "Removal of the requirement to register non-restricted firearms". Non-restricted firearms are defined as " an ordinary rifle, shotgun or combination gun that is not described as being restricted or prohibited".

In Massachusetts, you have need a permit to own a rifle, a shotgun, or even pepper spray. You let 12 year olds get gun licenses (see 8.2-3 here), you let people keep automatic weapons obtained before 1978 and assualt weapons before 1992 and various other years they were grandfathered in (see here). Most people in Massachusetts would consider letting a 12 year old own a shotgun to be child abuse. You have to be 18 in Massachusetts to get a permit which lets you own hunting rifles and shotguns, and the only weapons that are "grandfathered in" are guns which are banned under consumer safety laws designed to make it impossible (or not worth the effort) for gun companies to make their guns "massachusetts compliant). This doesn't include automatic weapons.

Although "the vast majority of violent crime in Canada" doesn't involve guns (juristats 2008 report "Firearms & Violent Crimes"), in 2006 there were over 8,000 cases of "fire-arm related violent crime". It's hard to compare to Massachusetts, given population size and other difference, but not only were there fewer individuals arraigned on any charge related to guns (Office of Public Safety's "Analysis of Massachusetts Firearms Related Offenses"), from 2006 to 2008, barely any were violent and "the majority of firearms related charges for all age groups were dismissed or Nol prossed". Also, according to this 2010 study from the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, the Boston Gun Project was effective, resulting in a decline in youth violence (while Canada is on the rise there).

But that wasn't getting the job done. So I went to the ICPSR National Incident-Based Reporting System data at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) and downloaded their data files for 2006 in SPSS format (after running several online analyses, which weren't cutting it) and their codebook. And I was able to filter offenses and crime by state, looking only at Massachusetts (V2002(20)), and compared weapon types (ranging from poison and drugs to explosives and motor vehicles, but also including a range of guns including not specified and other). Crimes ranged from kidnapping to rape to various types of assault and of course homicide. Suprisingly, no weapons were used in counterfeiting. However, when it comes to guns, they were involved in about 1,000 cases of violent crime. That's about 1/8 of canada's that year (also, my data indicated higher number than the FBI- see the table of Massachusetts here). Canada has five times the population of Massachusetts. And although like Canada, we had far more uses of knives in assaults, this is not true murder or non-negligent homicide, where guns were 2x that of knives.
For Canada I only have 2008 on hand from juristat, but:
"In 2008, police reported nearly 23,500 victims of a violent crime committed with a knife, accounting for 6% of all violent incidents. Homicides and attempted murders had the highest proportion of incidents involving knives, at about one-third"

In 2008, the total number (teeth, guns, knives, bats, cars, etc.) of US violent crimes was almost 30,000. If 23,500 of violent crime in canada used knives, and accounted for only 6% if the violence, that means that the total number is almost 400,000. That's over 12 times the number in Massachusetts, but your population is only 5-6 times larger. And even in Massachusetts more people were killed by guns in 2006 (and in general) than knives, this is not so of Canada yet about 8x the number of people were killed by violent uses of firearms in that year.

So yeah, we have a ways to go before we're more like Canada. We have the to increase violence a bit, switch from using guns in homicides to knives, increase the violent use of both, decrease the amount of legislature monitoring the acquisition, sales, traffic, ownership, usage, transportation, etc., of guns and weapons in general, and decrease ethnic and cultural diversity. But at least the absolute certainty that conservatives are flawed in various ways and that the differences are likely due to things like inferior intelligence rather than fundamental philosophical differences, as well as the seemingly incapacity to recognize our own liberal intolerance or instability and other traits so "typical" of conservatives is something we folks in Massachusetts seem to share with Canada.

However, I'm sure your time in Massachusetts completely negates the fact that I spent almost my whole life in various places there, and renders any research on Canadian crime flawed.

Meh. I still think you need to actually live in other countries, or at least travel to them briefly, before you begin to think of yourself as someone who is in the least bit qualified to compare anybody's culture with anybody else's. Arguing with statistics is a fool's game. They will tell you whatever you want to hear. There is a whole history of the gun registry that you clearly are not aware of and I can't be bothered to get into, and differences in the mentality of Canadian gun owners (moose hunters, basically) and American gun owners (militant patriots, basically) that I can't be bothered to describe. It's apples and oranges.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Arguing with statistics is a fool's game. They will tell you whatever you want to hear.

REALLY!? You've used the statistics to understand your own country:

Just fact-checking my own post here, I found some interesting statistics. First off, in Canada, two thirds of divorces are apparently initiated by women. Also, in the US (different article), women who marry before the age of 25 are four times more likely to end up divorcing than women who wait until their late 20s.

Kind of makes you wonder if perhaps it is marriage culture rather than hook-up culture that is not serving the best interests of young women.

Judging by the declining statistics for theism, you must be right - at least in Canada.

I just want to jump in here and say that obviously the studies are comparing the statistics for legal, authorized gun ownership to the statistics for gun crime. What do you think they did, these limp-wristed Canadian academics, go knocking on doors in the projects of America with questionnaires? "Do you own a gun? Is it an illegal gun? Are you a criminal? Thank you for your time!"

You've relied on them to judge the US (and attacked someone who suggested that statistics just "tell you what you want to hear" in the process):

Let's not forget the old saying about there being three different types of lies. Lies, damn lies and statistics. It all depends on who is gathering the stats and how.

Yes, well, it's the World Health Organisation gathering the statistics, using the devious leftist methodology of research. I even posted a link so you can go gather some in your own way and present them with whatever conclusions your own assemblage leads you to draw.

Or you can just dismiss the whole notion of facts, research and analysis and stick to simplistic, vague "expert opinions" from free market propagandists...
The problem you have to face is that the belief that the US system is in any way superior to countries with universal health coverage is factually incorrect.

Wouldn't it be nice if you, too, lived in a country where it was possible to obtain statistics on how many times a year your local hospitals report incidents of fleas / fruitflies / rats / cockroaches via the freedom of information act? Alas, it's not to be - your hospitals are private, and as such there is no way for you to access their administrative records via FOI legislation.

Anyway, what do you feel a single batch of figures released for political gain by the UK's Conservative Party (who favour the privatisation of the NHC) indicates, when divorced from comparison with actual scientific research?

You've even used them on topics related to the one under discussion:

The statistics on Wikipedia disagree. According to the UN office of Drugs and Crime. Norway has a 0.6 per 100,000 murder rate and the US has a 4.2 per 100,000 murder rate. I'm not sure where America sits in the Nationmaster rankings.

I'd keep going, but that would just mean another long post. The point is that you seem to think statistics are pretty useful when it suits your purposes.

There is a whole history of the gun registry that you clearly are not aware

What do you know of what I know?

I don't know about statistics, but in 30 years living in some of the "worst neighbourhoods" in Canada (ie. Main and Hastings, Vancouver) I've never experienced anything worse than bike theft. (I didn't bother locking it - my bad).

So I don't know what the statistics are, but in Canada there is no incentive at all for anyone but gangs to carry guns, and they mostly only kill each other. Very Darwinian.

Like statistics, history of legal changes, politics, etc., such as the history of gun registry is not about living in lots of places. And as the "whole history of gun registry" relates to things that happened before you were born, your experience simply cannot speak to it. And unless you have spent a lot of time in two places at once to attend all the legislative events that happened during your lifetime related to the "whole history of gun registry", you'd have to study.

You'd have to take your own advice about

actual scientific research

&

facts, research and analysis

and read things like Parliament, politics and policy: Gun control in Canada, 1867--2003 (Carleton University, Ontario)

Or there's the Canadian-based Coalition for Gun Control "founded in the wake of the Montreal Massacre". Somehow, Canadians might think you don't represent the nation, as we find:
"Every year, as many as 3,000 firearms are reported stolen in Canada, by definition ending up in the hands of criminals. According to the police, about half the guns used in crime in Toronto are guns that were at one time legally owned, many of them stolen in breaks-in"

That's from a report for Canadians by Canadians. It opens (almost) with this:
"Although half of the handguns recovered in crime are smuggled into the country from the U.S., the other half originate from Canadian gun owners. Legal guns are misused by their owners, and used in domestic homicide, suicides, and accidents."

They even have a report on gendered violence (I believe I got into that, without even visiting Canada!)

But WAIT! In this Canadian culture we somehow have institutes like the Mackenzie Institute (founded in Ontario) which have put out report after report on the evils of gun control (and if you are interested in history, I'm sure their unbiased Canadian perspective behind "The Lessons of Disarmament" is illuminating).

They also blame Americans...for driving up gun prices in Canada:
"In the past decade, the number of licensed gun dealers in the United States has shrunk by about two thirds...The US government and most American gun manufacturers are eager to shut down those who divert firearms into the underground supply. It is these American actions and not our failed 1994 gun control law that escalated gun prices on Canada’s streets."

I don't actually trust either type of group, even if they are Canadian, but I still read what they write because in order to understand the dynamics of crime, culture, markets, legislature and yes even "the whole history of gun registry", one needs to actually research.

Meh. I still think you need to actually live in other countries, or at least travel to them briefly, before you begin to think of yourself as someone who is in the least bit qualified to compare anybody's culture with anybody else's.

I don't think that equating a culture with a country is usually at all accurate. Apart from being told by Canadians about how "Quebec is a whole different world", I'd say even though I haven't been there, the research on Northwest Canada (where the percentage of the population of aborignal peoples shifts to a majority) and the cultural experiences in the literature about, well, different cultures is enough to inform me that you are the one comparing cultures. I'm comparing countries and the cultures within them. Also, as "actual scientific research" shows that individuals tend to know less than they think based on generalizing subjective experiences, exposure to mainstream media (such as articles on research rather than actually reading studies), and so on, maybe I do need a lot more experience in Canada to understand its cultures. But I don't need it to understand socio-economic dynamics, crime, etc. And despite your trivializing of statistics, it seems that's only when you find them inconvenient.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

REALLY!? You've used the statistics to understand your own country:................................

There is some pleasure but little reality in comparing one country to another, with the eyes and ears of a native of either.

Canada Is a complex country of at least three peoples.. The French the English and the native populations. None of them have any good reason to love the other.
However they are learning to get along.
In the process they have ended up rather more with the attitudes of the European than the American.

The same applies to the ownership of arms. They Like Europe (including the UK) Know That guns are not the answer to anything. If you need one for hunting fine, but they have no place amongst towns people. This is difficult to achieve, but worth the effort.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

There is some pleasure but little reality in comparing one country to another, with the eyes and ears of a native of either.

I pointed out numerous times problems with comparisons in e.g., this post:

But there is a further problem with comparisons to the US...

I even tried to show that a single state could be compared to Canada in some ways, yet was different in others and was quite different from the US in general, yet the response was:

I've been to Massachusetts. I did not find it at all similar to any part of Canada I've seen. If that is your most liberal state, I think you still have A long way to go before you can claim to have anything resembling Canadian political sensibilities in your country.

And the only reason I ever compared countries/states was because I objected to how it was being done in this thread:

I don't understand what American conservatives have against any of this ^

I guess some things are hard to imagine if you've never had them. Doesn't help that your airwaves are filled with talking heads misrepresenting liberalism 24-7.

We get a lot of American TV here. I think Jon Stewart is your only well-known media liberal, and possibly Paul Krugman, although he would not be considered a liberal here.

Just to give you a little perspective, speaking as a person from a relatively liberal country compared to yours, we're actually pretty relaxed and content with our universal health care, our corporate political donation bans, our private donation limits, our tax-funded abortions, our gay marriage, our relative scarcity of gun violence, and all the other perks of a pluralistic, liberal society.

Canada Is a complex country of at least three peoples

Hence this:

I don't think that equating a culture with a country is usually at all accurate. Apart from being told by Canadians about how "Quebec is a whole different world", I'd say even though I haven't been there, the research on Northwest Canada (where the percentage of the population of aborignal peoples shifts to a majority) and the cultural experiences in the literature about, well, different cultures is enough to inform me that you are the one comparing cultures. I'm comparing countries and the cultures within them.

In the process they have ended up rather more with the attitudes of the European than the American.

So canada is a complex country (making comparisons unrealistic), but "European" and "American" are adjectives which can be used to describe attitudes? What, precisely, are "American" or "European" attitudes other than using national borders to compare tendencies within countries? And why, after you opened with the claim that this is unrealistic, would you use these terms as you do?

There are about 315,000,000 in the United States. Canada has less than 10% of that population. All of Europe has about double, and either you have simply decided that numerous European countries don't count, or you are missing what is going on in significant portions of Europe. This table is from from HEUNI's 2010 International Statistics on Crime and Justice:

Notice that in this graph, homicide rates in Eastern Europe outnumber North America. Figure 4 (from the same report) gives us a breakdown of the Americas, with Columbia leading in Homicide rate per 100,000 and the US right after Cuba. Figure 5. breaks down Europe, and we find that in order to get to numbers comparable to the entire US, we find that countries as small as Estonia have higher homicide rates, as do many other European countries. Of course, as so many of these countries have terrible records (as noted in the report) comparison is difficult.

I noted difficult comparisons earlier, when I cited studies on the poor methodologies employed by canadian researchers noted in canadian research.

In fact, even if we stick to the European Union, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia outnumber the homicide rates of the US.

Yet you state:

The same applies to the ownership of arms. They Like Europe (including the UK) Know That guns are not the answer to anything.

Apparently you should let them know that this is what they think. Because apart from the homicide rates noted above, we can see that, for example:
1) As several sources have documented over recent years (e.g., Cook et al.'s "The illicit firearms trade in North America"), Canada seems to want to illegally obtain guns from the US.
2) Globally, trafficking in small arms has included both Canada and the UK as a major source of weapons for middle east, as noted in e.g., "Small Arms, Big Problems: The Fallout of the Global Gun Trade" Foreign Affairs 90.1
3) Although the Eastern & Central European market has slowed significantly since the cold war era, this is because companies have been largely replaced by criminal networks who rely on (among other things) the excess of small arms left over from the cold war, individuals who manufacture small arms, and weapons funnelled into Africa from North America (including Canada and the US) as well as Europe, and then into European countries.
4) If guns aren't the answer in Canada and "Europe", as they seem to be far too often in the US, knives do the trick. As I have noted already, both Canada and the UK are reporting that violent assualts and homicides using knives are a serious and increasing problem. Same is true with Australia.
5) Once more, we have population to consider. I already compared Massachusetts, with less than a 6th of the population of Canada, we find about an 8th of homicides committed in Massachusetts using guns. Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, homicides are typically committed using guns, while in Canada, knives are the preferred weapon of choice.

Most importantly, this thread began with about the worst neuroscience study I've ever seen, and somehow turned into how "Americans" just won't stop doing whatever it is this somehow unified culture (contrasted with Canada's complex diversity, which they manage with a country larger than the US in terms of size and tiny in terms of population) does to ruin the world. But apparently horrible research needs to be supplemented by trashing the use of statistics and research in order to support rhetoric.

The US has tons of problems. Gun violence here is greater than many places in the world as is violence. But as you noted in your opening (and then somehow appear to have ignored), national comparisons are seldom realistic. Comparing Portugal and Spain, or Norway and Sweden, might be pretty feasible aross several domains. However, while Europe has a history of national conflicts going back before the US existed, and the US has had the highest rates of generations of diverse immigration populations, the problems here are not readily compared to those in Canada, the UK, etc. The US has a history of religious groups persecuted in Europe coming here, and the protestant background of the US in a large part is due to that history. Meanwhile, the US does not have the problem in certain European countries with unprecedented growth in a particular religious/ethnic expansion in certain regions and the difficulties this has posed. The US is alone in supporting a global criminal network fueled by drugs which it spends billions "fighting" and its citizens spend billions supporting.

I am not objecting to pointing out problems in the US. I'm objecting to an elitist moral superiority founded largely upon rhetoric and persisting in inaccurate and unfair judgments without good empirical support. In particular, when science has sunk so low that at peer-reviewed journal would publish a study by Colin Firth and some hasty efforts by two inexperienced (in social neuroscience) specialists who clearly didn't know what they were doing, pointing to problems with conservatives or liberals or religious people based on articles which misrepresent bad research is not the way to progress. I support what you said to start with: comparisons are too often unrealistic. And when made, context is necessary. What is important is to look at the problems not from a "if only X country/group/etc. were more like us/me", but from as unbiased as perspective as possible. And the study both you and the OP linked to is incredibly biased and has nothing to offer as far as science is concerned, but this has not stopped this thread from continuing to propagate rhetoric over research (good research, anyway).